


when you reach me

by perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, Feelings, Future Fic, M/M, Moving In Together, kuroo's in a band. tsukishima's in grad school, like. a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 23:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: “I was thinking— if, maybe you’d— we’d, uh, want a companion. Or something.”“Let me get this straight. Tsukishima Kei, are you asking me if I want to adopt a cat?”-Somewhere along the way, this house turned into a home.





	when you reach me

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is not actually about cats
> 
>  
> 
> [made a playlist for this one](https://open.spotify.com/user/11186251434/playlist/54z0mSWHPaJwayBEAFDvlb?si=zbHOkf3IS0SWhxZiy2e6gA)

_When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word._

  


 

 

i.

It takes exactly five minutes and twenty-two seconds to get from the front door of their new apartment to the _konbini_ across the street downstairs.

 

It’s been a long, long day. They’re both tired, just short of exhausted. Kei decides that he wants strawberry ice cream at one o’clock in the morning, so Tetsurou, being the benevolent, understanding man he is, drags his ass downstairs for him.

 

It takes exactly five minutes and twenty-two seconds, he knows, because he has one eye on the watch the whole time. The cashier behind the counter scratches at the stubble on his face and coughs out a clipped _welcome_ before going back to doing whatever it is cashiers do on the nighttime shift at twenty-four hour _konbini._ Tetsurou retrieves his ice cream from the frozen section (he makes sure to get the right brand, because Kei is particular about these things) and then heads back to the counter to pay. As the cashier rings up his change, Tetsurou’s eyes flit to the laminated sign taped to the back of the register. The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum’s doing a collaboration featuring some of the esteemed artist Hokusai’s works. Though it’s rather unusual for _konbini_ fare, there’s a small stack of postcards with various pieces of his printed on the back; Tetsurou bends over slightly, slides one out of the plastic holder, and peers at it.

 

The cashier looks at him, half expectant, half sleepy. “Customer, your change?”

 

Tetsurou turns towards him again, smiling cheerily in the artificial light. “I’ll take this, too,” he says, and then walks back out into the gloomy chill of the night, a tub of strawberry ice cream in his hands and a small, printed postcard tucked in his back pocket.

 

Afterwards, he sits with Kei in the half-dark on the sofa in the living room. It’s all they’ve really set up so far— everything else is in boxes or under layers of crinkly packing tape. Kei prods at his ice cream with his spoon, his back pressed against Tetsurou’s shoulder and his feet propped up on the opposite armrest. Tetsurou, in turn, leans in closer, because it is nighttime, and Kei gets cold easily.

 

Kei gets cold _very_ easily. It’s something about the way his body is angular and lithe and too thin, almost, like a delicate blown glass sculpture in a museum exhibit. It means sweaters in summer, and thick coats layered upon each other in winter. It means cold fingers searching for the heat of Tetsurou’s skin at night.

 

Kei also falls asleep easily. When he eventually drifts off, Tetsurou gently pries the condensation-wet container and the spoon out of his hands, washes up quietly in the kitchen, and then carries him back to their bedroom. Kei does not stir; for all the profound layers of sentimentality that exist under the sleek shine of his sarcasm, he is a heavy, heavy sleeper. He does not wake even as Tetsurou deposits him on his side of the bed, pulling the blankets up to his chin. He just furrows his brow faintly, drawing his limbs up towards himself like a child would. Tetsurou presses his lips to his forehead gently.

 

Then he goes out to the balcony. Outside, the city blinks languidly, sleepwalking across the horizon of the world with delicate, butterfly-wing footsteps. He rests his elbows on the railings and tilts his face up to the sky. It is thick and muddled, polluted with light from the world below.

 

A few minutes later he heads back in, latches the sliding door, and crawls under the covers. Feeling the weight of another body beside him, the familiar, reassuring presence, he lets his eyes slip shut.

  


ii.

In the spring of their third year, they move into an apartment together.

 

Tetsurou wants matching mugs and toothbrush holders, and a nice clean spot in the bedroom for his guitar. Kei wants, well, whatever he wants, which he doesn’t talk about very much. But he does open his mouth here, to say yes. Which is the point, which is what matters the most when it comes to Kei and his silences. He says yes.

  


iii.

“The instruction manual said this wouldn’t take more than thirty minutes to assemble,” Kei says, frowning at the mess of screws and bolts and wooden bits on the floor. Tetsurou is lying on his back beside a half-constructed (Kei called it half-demolished; he begs to differ) IKEA table. Behind him, the morning sunshine filters in through the rice-white curtains and limns the sparsely-furnished living room in shades of gold.

 

“You’re the one with the manual,” Tetsurou informs him, and lets his hand flop lifelessly to the floor.

 

Kei’s grip on the glossy paper tightens. Petulantly: “I know.”

 

It is Monday. Tetsurou had freed up his day in advance so he could help Kei with sorting out the brilliant natural disaster that has consumed nearly every inch of their apartment. At the asscrack of dawn Kei had risen to accomplish his morning routine, which is expressly reserved for when the rest of the world is fast asleep. At ten o’clock (so, a significant while later) Tetsurou wandered out of bed to cooling toast and coffee, Kei leaning against the kitchen wall with his head cocked to the side and one of his old university shirts sliding off one shoulder.

 

At that, Tetsurou had pinched himself, discovered that he was, in fact, awake, and walked up towards him. He’d kissed Kei’s shoulder teasingly, and the other had flushed bright red and then pushed him away, saddling him with laundry duty for the day.

 

So, anyway, Kei says _I know,_ so Tetsurou sits up long enough to reach over with his hand and tug Kei down to the floor with him. He wraps an arm around Kei’s waist. Kei lets him.

 

“Don't worry about it,” he murmurs into Kei’s ear. “I meant it when I said you could do whatever you want with our place. It’s fine.” Unspoken, the further implications of his words oscillate in the fine pocket of space between them— by _do whatever you want_ Tetsurou also means _with me,_ as in _you can do whatever you want with me and I will let you. I will let you._

 

The walls of their living room are the faintest shade of peach, warm and alight with the washed-out glow of morning. It is nothing to shout about; there’s the white sofa against the far wall, the small dining table that is the product of yesterday’s efforts, the stacks of cardboard boxes littering the wooden-paneled floor. When Tetsurou draws his finger across a spot on the floor it comes away coated with dust. Kei has to hunch a little when he digs around in the fridge for the bag of white chocolate pretzels he always keeps inside.

 

Their first apartment together is nothing to shout about. It’s in one of the quieter, residential areas of Tokyo, where the streets are lined with restaurants run by generations of warm, disjointed family and dollar stores manned by kind old ladies with milk caramels tucked inside their pockets. It’s here, and it’s small, barely large enough for two youngsters with dreams that scrape the ceiling everywhere they go, which is to say that it is perfect. Which is to say that Tetsurou is already a little in love with it, even though it’s been less than a week since they got here.

 

Kei responds by nudging him lightly with his shoulder. “I know,” he says again. His voice is still flat. Kei’s voice is generally flat unless he is splayed like a debauched angel on the sheets (at those times, he is helpless, and Tetsurou is helplessly lost, and the world burns around them) or trying to get a rise out of a friend or a broken elevator button or Tetsurou. Still, beneath that there is something lighter, a coiled spring unwinding. Tetsurou reads the subtle, almost secretive change in his tone, and accepts it.

 

“C’mon,” he says, and rises to his feet again. “We can go out for lunch later— I walked past a coffee shop with a killer dessert display the other day. You’ll love it.”

 

“I am skeptical about your definition of ‘killer’, but okay.”

 

Kei stays on the floor with his legs still stretched out in front of him, his cat-print shorts riding just a little bit too high up on his thighs. Years, maybe even months ago, he wouldn’t have let himself be caught dead in Tetsurou’s clothes. Amidst the muddy darkness of night sometimes a mix-up or two would occur, but every time Kei would disappear back into his head and wait rigidly for Tetsurou to return his clothes before he could function properly again. _It’s embarrassing,_ he would say, pulling the sleeves of his shirt down over his arms. At that, Tetsurou would smile at him in the dark, because that’s what he does best, being reassuring and making things look better on the surface. Applying a new coat of varnish where cracks have started to show. _It doesn’t have to be,_ he’d reply, time and time again.

 

It took forever for Kei to realize that himself. It took forever for Tetsurou to come to terms with his own heart enough to let it happen.

 

Tetsurou beams at his response with all of his teeth. They have something together, now, however fleeting it may seem to be when one takes a bird’s eye view. Tetsurou has never been an idealist; he occupies the liminal space between cynicism and possessing an unwavering belief in all things good and kind, which puts him in a position where he is ready to swing whichever way strikes his fancy, at any time. Tetsurou does a lot of that. Swinging, bungee-jumping, navigating the choppy waters at the river’s edge. Tetsurou does a lot of changing his mind.

 

“An example of the word ‘killer’ in use,” He recites robotically, trying to mimic the tone he imagines a dictionary in human form might possess. “‘Kuroo Tetsurou has a _killer_ smile’.”

 

Kei scoffs at him, but he’s smiling, too. It illuminates the soft contours of his face, all of him still young and vibrant, still beautiful. Twenty-two has been kind to him. Most of all, he has begun to be kind to himself.

 

It’s a growing process, and they’ve only just started working through this particular segment of their lives, but Tetsurou— Tetsurou thinks he can let himself have this. He has never been an idealist, but fuck it to all the seedy articles he has ever skimmed through on the internet. He’ll assemble every single piece of furniture in this damned apartment. He’ll buy a set of matching mugs. He’ll coax a wildflower out of some asscrack in the floorboards like he’s a goddamn Ghibli character if that’s what it’ll take him to prove to the world, to himself, and to Kei, that what they have here will last.

 

Because when he leans over Kei’s shoulder to see what he’s reading, curled up on the sofa with apple-patterned socks, Kei doesn’t startle anymore. Because Kei will sometimes let his head fall onto the slope of Tetsurou’s shoulder when he is tired now, instead of shrinking into an unoccupied corner of the room. Because Kei reads out instructions on how to build a life together out of recycled wood bits and shiny nails, and Tetsurou finds he understands enough to follow along.

 

In spite of all the river safari adventures of his youth, this is one thing Tetsurou will not change his mind on. This is the one thing he wants to keep.

  


iv.

“Did you know,” Tsukishima muses dryly, “it takes less than a second for you to become infatuated with someone?”

 

His voice reverberates across the vast, open space of the third gymnasium like it’s been amplified by a microphone. The words are spoken casually, matter-of-factly; _did you know,_ Tsukishima asks, and means a multitude of other things. None of them are immediately discernible. Tetsurou looks up from where he’s folding the volleyball net away. He raises an eyebrow.

 

“I’m not surprised— crushes _are_ pretty common, y’know.”

 

Tsukishima purses his lips. It’s an unintentionally flattering gesture, one which Tetsurou traces with his eyes almost without meaning to. He catches himself in time, though. Clears his throat. Returns his gaze to safer subjects, like the net in his hands. They’ve just wrapped up a night of criminally late practice again, and Bokuto and Akaashi have only just left the gym themselves. Now, they are alone.

 

“And yet, _most_ people are convinced that the hot _senpai_ they’ve never spoken to is the love of their life,” Tsukishima replies, needlessly sharp. There’s a challenging edge to it, as if he’s inviting Tetsurou to correct him. Wise, two-years-older Tetsurou. _Senpai_ Tetsurou. Hot (?) Tetsurou. He has no idea what Kei’s gunning for. It’s more than a little disconcerting.

 

“Why, aren’t you an optimistic little shit.”

 

He smirks at the displeasure that flickers across Tsukishima’s face.

 

“It’s called being realistic, Kuroo-san. Feelings don’t last, even when they’re real. And they’re not real very often, anyway. No matter how you look at it, it’s not worth it.”

 

Tetsurou watches out of the corner of his eye as Tsukishima draws closer to him, a moonbeam sliding across dark waters to the other end of the pier. He comes to a stop a safe distance from Tetsurou. Keeping things impersonal and polite and worlds away, as per usual.

 

“You won’t know until you’ve experienced it yourself, kid,” he opts for responding with, keeping his voice bright and airy in the hushed, surreal atmosphere of the night. “Trust me, I’m older.”

 

“Only by two years,” Tsukishima murmurs, faintly accusatory, mostly flat.

 

Tetsurou has no idea what his alleged crime is— does he know that Tetsurou’s practiced purr stutters sometimes around him? Has he figured out that he sticks his hands in his pockets when he’s nervous, and not actually to make himself look cool? At eighteen, Tetsurou knows a lot of things, like how to differentiate cubic equations, and how to turn down classmates with love letters clamped between their teeth, and the sheer immensity of the distance between the earth and the sun. But he doesn’t know what’s going on in Tsukishima Kei’s head. He figures he never will.

 

“Less than a second to become infatuated, and then a while longer until you fall in love. How about that?” He offers, teasing.

 

“Sure,” Tsukishima replies blandly, but it’s clear he’s already lost interest and moved on. At the very least, Tetsurou’s finely-attuned people reading skills tell him this much. Shrugging to himself, he begins to push the volleyball cart towards the storage room at the back. Tetsurou starts after him, his chest burning with a nameless, newfound sensation. Behind them, the third gymnasium fades back into darkness.

  


v.

It takes Kei three days to remember which cabinet the mugs are in. He has perfected the art of wiggling out of Tetsurou’s arms without waking him up, and quietly flaunts the achievement in front of the other whenever he thinks of it.

 

To be fair, Tetsurou is an inhumanely light sleeper. He joked about it once, saying that he must have been some kind of assassin or vigilante in his past life. To his surprise, instead of playing along with his musing of the day (Tetsurou has many, many musings about many, many things), Kei had merely asked him _where does that put me?_ The honesty in his voice had caught Tetsurou off guard. Even though he had been tired, he felt that he had to flop out of bed immediately so he could wrap his arms around Kei’s middle and press his face into the back of his neck. A feeling arose, then, like sunlight shifting through the bottom of the swimming pool. Like being lifted onto the toes of your feet by the man in the moon.

 

Tetsurou is good with words. That does not mean that he always chooses to use them. Sometimes, he is lingering handholds and touching shoulders and Kei, who is perhaps even more careful with his words, understands. They understand each other, through the intertwined rivers of their own silences.

 

It works like this, too. By the third day Kei has the lay of their apartment memorized like a railroad map. He greets Tetsurou with his hip pressed against the back of a chair, a tuft of hair sticking out at the top of his head. There's a half-finished mug of coffee along with a plate of half-eaten breakfast, and another, full mug beside it. Behind him, a pan sits on the stove with steam wafting out. Kei’s chair is pulled out from the table.

 

Yesterday Tetsurou had spent a good five minutes rummaging through the various cabinets and cupboards in the kitchen while grumbling incoherently, looking for the mugs; he's guessing Kei noticed. Which he is grateful for— Tetsurou remembers things like weird car plate numbers and the distances between famous cities on maps, and forgets just about everything else. He can tell you which bakeries in the city have the best strawberry shortcake (according to Kei) in order from first to last (as ranked by Kei). And yet, he misses the last train back often enough that Kei has taken to calling him up afterwards to make sure he hasn’t fallen into a ditch somewhere.

 

“Good morning.” Kei inclines his head at him, and then sits back down.

 

Stifling a yawn, Tetsurou slumps into the opposite seat.

 

“Good morning to you too.” He works up a sleepy smile, crooked and just about half-there. Kei has classes fairly early on Wednesdays; Tetsurou has a shift at the music store down at Shin-Kiba. Weekday mornings like this are bizarre and rare and new, the way the morning light slants across the floor still foreign to them both. He doesn’t fret at the roughness of the arrangement. They will get used to it eventually.

 

The mugs on the table are faded and covered in permanent marker streaks, leftover from Kei’s days in his college dorms. It's not the best idea they've had, pouring hot beverages into little mugs made of plastic, but Tetsurou wants to make sure that the new pair they pick out is nice enough to use for a long while afterwards, and so far, they just haven’t been able to afford the time. Tetsurou sips at his coffee, kicks gently at Kei’s feet under the table.

 

To his delight, Kei goes along with it. He wiggles his frigid toes against Tetsurou’s calves, smirking a little when it elicits a knee jerk reaction from him. Tetsurou sighs dramatically and tries to keep his coffee from spilling. His eyes wander to the peach-pale walls, affixed with little metal hooks in some places where the previous owners had kept shelves or photo frames. There’s a flower shop adorned with hanging planters near the train station. Slowly, an idea begins to take shape in his mind.

 

“Do you have work today?” Kei asks quietly, interrupting the unspooling thread of his thoughts. He checks his watch, unhurried.

 

Tetsurou hums. “At the music store. I don’t have any gigs for a while, though.” He sets his drink down, steeples his fingers. “You?”

 

“Lectures, an afternoon tutorial, and then tutoring in the evening.” Kei sighs, poking absently at his droopy-looking egg. When he is bored or frustrated or annoyed, the contents of his plate are always the first to suffer. But Tetsurou can never find it in himself to chide him for his table manners, not when even this, and these drowsy-eyed mornings, have become cherished, endearing.

 

Instead, he says: “I’m sure that egg wants you to do your best today.”

 

“ _That egg_ was never sentient to begin with.”

 

“Okay, but I am. So that’s my wish.”

 

Kei huffs. “Corny,” he declares, but finishes eating anyway, and deposits his plate in the sink. He checks his watch again.

 

“I’ll wash up when I’m done, you can go ahead,” Tetsurou calls over his shoulder, and smiles to himself at the way Kei’s stance relaxes at his words. After all these years he still prefers to keep most of his thoughts close to himself. But Tetsurou’s gotten better at reading him, too. They’ve worked out a way of moving around each other that doesn’t involve too many gaps in the netting, that keeps the world afloat.

 

“Thank you,” Kei says. He goes to get his bag, slinging it over one shoulder, and pulls his headphones snugly over his head.

 

Tetsurou meets him at the doorway, still wearing the old, off-white shirt and shorts he slept in. He slides the headphones half off Kei’s ears, grinning at the small noise of annoyance he makes in response.

 

“Have a good day, Kei.”

 

Kei rolls his eyes at the overly affectionate lilt of his voice, but his hands come up to rest at Tetsurou’s hips for a fleeting moment.

 

“Don’t make too many high schoolers swoon at work.”

 

“I don’t have much of a say in the matter, frankly,” Tetsurou laughs. “But all right.”

 

Nine a.m. on a Wednesday morning, in a part of the city that still feels more like uncharted territory than home, the morning sun spilling in through the open front door and crowding over his vision: Kei leaves for college, and Tetsurou sees him off with a smile.

 

Once the door’s been latched again, the little hook in the center now one set of keys lighter, Tetsurou turns around and faces the still-dusty, still-cluttered interior of their apartment. He places his hands on his hips, puffing out his chest with vigor.

 

“Let’s do this,” he announces to no one in particular, and then walks back in.

  


vi.

It takes roughly an hour and a half to get to the bar across the city where Tetsurou and his semi-serious, semi-not band perform on most weeks. He usually tries to leave at least ten minutes earlier than that, so he has a little leeway for stray cats on the street or a little side quest down some enchanting back alley.

 

Today’s arrangement falls just short of “usually”. It’s a Thursday evening, for one. Thursdays mean dinner at home and legs tangled up under the table, old movies on the sofa, but then the LINE message lights up Tetsurou’s phone where it’s been left face-up on the bed, _our act for the night cancelled on us suddenly do u guys want the stage,_ and _of course_ they want the stage, so he has to go.

 

It’s all very abrupt; there’s barely an hour to go before he’s expected in the dim underground establishment. His favorite jeans are still in the wash. He bites back his complaints, because Tetsurou is not about the small things, not like this, and grabs a pair of less comfortable, but equally flattering, skinny jeans. A black V-neck shirt goes on top of that, the stud in his left earlobe gets swapped out for a thin silver chain, and if his bandmates laugh at his horrifyingly teenager-esque fashion choices he’s going to flip them off and remind them that it’s Thursday.

 

They do laugh at him. He flips them off and says _it’s Thursday, not everyone has a walk-in closet from hell,_ and Bokuto punches his shoulder, silver highlighter setting his cheeks aglow. Oikawa, who does have a walk-in closet from hell, tries to smudge his eyeliner. They ascend the stairs, running a-mile-a-minute away from the gates of heaven.

 

And goddamn, because if there isn’t anything Tetsurou loves more than being onstage, feeling the earthquake as it builds up beneath his feet, surges into his hands, his chest, rides a crest when he plucks out a riff on the guitar strings. He croons into the microphone, letting his eyes fall half-shut. The tsunami wave of intensity crashes over the audience before the sound can even catch up. Look, he wants to say, through the raw exposed flesh of each word he spits out like a game prize. Look. Don’t think, don’t breathe, just— look.

 

It’s over as fast as it all began, and soon they’re piling out of the bar into the cool night air, laughing themselves over the moon. It’s late; past midnight, probably. The sounds of the city have faded to background chatter.

 

Slung between Oikawa, who claims that he doesn’t want to be here, and Sugawara, who announces that he does, Tetsurou fishes his phone out of his pocket and then promptly stops in the middle of the street, scarecrow-like. The glossy screen lights up with the usual string of notifications— a couple of likes on Instagram, an email from his cousin in Kanazawa, a discount notice from DONKI. And then, further down: texts. Not a lot, just two; short and succinct. Artificially, offhandedly aloof.

 

_Kei [12:03 A.M.]:_

_it’s late_

 

_Kei [12:09 A.M.]:_

_did you finally die in a ditch somewhere._

 

Tetsurou stops. Scarecrow-like.

 

“What’s wrong?” Oikawa pokes at his side with no malice.

 

His heart thuds like bass speakers in his ears, but already his mind is running light-years ahead of the rest of his sweaty, swaying self. In his mind, an image builds itself out of the dust. Today’s arrangement is not “usually”. He had forgotten to text Kei. He had forgotten.

 

A few feet behind him, Bokuto is serenading a very drunk Akaashi, who had braved the stuffy heat of the bar just for him and then lost all sense of inhibition, with a love song. If Tetsurou concentrates he can pick out the cicadas’ buzz, steady like a metronome. The stars are not out, tonight.

 

Tetsurou opens his mouth. “I—”

 

Akaashi walks into a lamp post.

 

“—Need to go.”

 

For reasons unbeknownst to the world, and probably better kept secret from Iwaizumi forever, Oikawa not only has a walk-in closet from hell, but also a motorcycle. The trains won’t be running for very long after this; thank God Oikawa has a motorcycle. Thank fucking God.

 

//

 

In the spring of their third year, they move into an apartment together. Tetsurou gets back to it a little after one a.m., the fabric of his black V-neck sticking uncomfortably to his skin with sweat. All the lights are off.

 

Kei sits on the edge of the bed, the sheets pooled like liquid silver around his waist. His hands are in his lap; his face is tilted up towards the window, away from the door. Tetsurou feels something lodge in his throat— something like his heart, but heavier, somehow, holier. Beyond the guilt curling low in his gut, there is awe and the inexplicable desire to pinch himself again. He crosses the room with quiet, padding footsteps. Kneels on the floor in front of Kei. Looks up.

 

“Hey,” Tetsurou says. His skinny jeans protest at his bent knees, his curved back. He ignores it. After a moment, Kei drops his gaze to his face.

 

“Not dead yet, I see.”

 

Tetsurou swallows. “I’m sorry.” He doesn't know where he should put his hands, so he leaves his palms flat on his thighs, fingers clenched tightly together.

 

“It’s fine. I couldn't sleep anyway.”

 

This is not uncommon. There are many triggers for Kei’s sleeplessness. Tetsurou knows only as many as he has been made privy to. At the beginning, this is all he knew: Kei, for the most part, sleeps like a rock through virtually any kind of auditory disturbance, in perfect contrast to Tetsurou’s own habit of drifting in and out of his dreams at the drop of a feather.

 

At the beginning, this was all he knew. Then one day in Tetsurou’s third year of college, he woke up in the middle of the night to see Kei drawing patterns with his finger in the blankets. _Can’t sleep,_ Kei had told him simply, as if he were saying _hot today isn’t it_ instead of _this is one of those problems I didn’t tell you about and it’s sort of a big problem when it appears but I don’t want you to think that._ His voice was rugged and strained with exhaustion, tense with the weight of all the hours he had spent painfully conscious of his existence while Tetsurou dozed blissfully beside him. _Can I do anything for you,_ Tetsurou had asked. Kei shook his head. _Not really._

 

For the rest of the night, Tetsurou drew patterns with his finger on the small of Kei’s back, humming an old love song in the back of his throat, until dawn began to creep along the mountain range of their bodies. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but the next thing he knew he was opening his eyes to Kei, perched on the bed like a sparrow, listing faintly to one side. _Well, you tried,_ Kei said wryly. The smile on his face had been genuine.

 

So this is what Tetsurou knows: Kei either sleeps like a rock, or not at all. And on the nights when he cannot sleep, Tetsurou is the one who sits with him on the sofa or the balcony or the cool tiles on the kitchen floor, surrounded by the sound of dreaming. The location does not matter so much as the fact that, wherever they are, it is always dark. Dark, and quiet, the world reduced to the sheer warmth of two bodies and the way they fold into each other.

 

“I’m sorry,” Tetsurou says again, softer, and then stretches forward so he can cover Kei’s hands with his own. His heart is going gray with guilt beneath his sweaty black V-neck. “There was a sudden opening in the line-up for tonight. Should’ve let you know.” The sharp technicolor beat shuddering through the floor of the bar is nothing more than an afterthought, now.

 

In response, Kei squeezes his hands. His skin is cold.

 

“I could tell. Your earring.” Kei jerks his head towards the silver chain dangling from Tetsurou’s earlobe.

 

“Ah— yeah.” It startles a breathy laugh out of Tetsurou. He reaches up absentmindedly to fiddle with the metal links, until Kei nudges him aside. Slowly, slowly, Kei’s hand curves around the side of his face. Slowly, slowly, Tetsurou turns into his touch.

 

He glances up at Kei from beneath his lashes for a second, and then presses his lips to the soft flesh of his palm; an act of reverence.

 

“Tetsurou, you—” Kei sighs with visible defeat. His skin is pale with moonlight, fine china sculpted into the point of his chin, silver pooling in the dip of his collarbones. There’s a faint dusting of pink on his face, barely visible in the darkness. Silently Tetsurou resolves himself to his fate: it is a small mercy, to be in love with someone as ethereal and yet undeniably human as Tsukishima Kei. And if he’s being three hundred times as sappy and poetic as usual, well, he’s an artist, it’s like two a.m., and it’s _Kei._ It’s Kei.

 

Tetsurou grins. Kei sighs and then leans in, turning Tetsurou’s face back towards him so he can press their lips together. The kiss is chaste and sweet, soft with the edges of sleep. When Kei pulls away, he drops his forehead onto Tetsurou’s shoulder despite the awkward position.

 

“Tired,” he mutters. It’s no surprise— he’s had a long day. Graduate school is no walk in any kind of park, not even a thrill park with the horror movie-esque jump scares and everything. Tetsurou is endlessly, endlessly proud of him. And Kei is cute when he’s sleepy; the snark filter comes loose and he ends up blurting out a lot of what’s on his mind without thinking. Which he usually does a lot of. Kei, like this, is younger. Not that Tetsurou isn’t in love with every version of him that exists in every non-falsifiable alternate universe, but this one, this Kei is something to be cherished. Carefully, Tetsurou lifts Kei off of him and maneuvers him back into bed.

 

“Then sleep.”

 

“Can’t.”

 

“Try to. I’ll be here.”

 

Quiet. A hand snakes out from under the covers and latches onto Tetsurou’s wrist. He waits, expectant.

 

“Sing me something.”

 

Now _this_ is new. Tetsurou feels the smile stretching across his face again; the loopy, lopsided one that Kei claims makes him look like a dumbass from a romcom film.

 

“My wish is your command,” Tetsurou says, and then launches into a stunning rendition of Kiss Kiss Fall In Love. Kei huffs in response and glares at him. His irises flash moon-gold in the room’s dim interior, but the intent in them is not lost on Tetsurou. _Don’t be a dumbass,_ he means. At this, Tetsurou sighs dramatically. “I hear you loud and clear.” He crosses his arms on the side of the bed, and rests his chin on top.

 

Not a lot of people know this, but before Tetsurou was in the whole helix-piercings-and-tattoo-sleeves affair of rock ‘n roll, his first love was the acoustic guitar. Well, no— his first love was Tsukishima Kei, aged fifteen, proud and petty and strikingly, hauntingly beautiful— but there was a guitar too, somewhere in there. There was always a guitar. Before Tetsurou learned to set the stage on fire, life consisted of shitty acoustic covers that he never had the guts to upload online, fingerpicking sequences from Ed Sheeran’s earliest albums, afternoons spent blowing his bangs out of his face so he could see what he was doing on the fretboard.

 

Only, he decides he doesn’t need a guitar this time. Shuffling forward slightly so he is as close to Kei as he can get, Tetsurou closes his eyes and searches the history of his heart for a song.

 

And then softly, sweetly, he begins to sing.

  


vii.

In the morning, they go out and buy matching mugs.

  


viii.

It takes weeks and weeks and weeks to close the chasm of the last two years. In a romantic comedy with an upbeat pop soundtrack, it would take hours, minutes, seconds. In a proper young adult novel about the everlasting flame of youth, they wouldn’t have fallen out of each other’s lives at all. In this one, Tetsurou ignores the fact that his heart fucking _stutters_ when he sees Tsukishima Kei standing under the awning of the campus coffee shop, white chocolate pretzels in his hands, talking to someone whose face he can’t see and doesn’t care for. He has never been an idealist.

 

Idealism means nothing if you can’t take those dreams and make them into reality. Tetsurou is terrified. He is so incredibly, incredibly terrified, he lets his feet carry him across the open, grassy ground before his brain can catch up. The next thing he knows, he’s standing at the juncture between Tsukishima and his friend (or is it an acquaintance? A lover? Two years is a long, long time. He has no idea where Tsukishima’s heart is now.), hands stuffed awkwardly into the pockets of his jeans. Tsukishima looks up at his entrance, his expression perfectly neutral. Nothing has dawned on him yet; it’s been barely a quarter of a second, Tetsurou is the only one with the machine-gun heartbeat. That’s good, he thinks. He can work with that.

 

When Tetsurou is twenty, he finds Tsukishima again, and it’s like he’s been yanked out of orbit for a second time. There he is; there’s the man in the moon, the magician and his candy wand, the boy who’s been haunting his dreams for the last two years even though he's never said anything, never told anyone. He is even prettier than he’d looked at sixteen, blond hair tousled, figure loose and graceful in the afternoon haze. He looks like every half-formed thought that has ever slipped out of Tetsurou’s grasp.

 

Tetsurou takes a deep breath, and now, _now_ the recognition begins to seep into Tsukishima’s eyes. There’s a glimmer of surprise, and then the drop of a curtain, the soft shutting of a door. Briefly, Tetsurou recognizes the instinctive retreat, and lets it go. There will be time for later. There will be time.

 

Right here, right now, he opens his mouth, lets himself relax into a slouch and a smile, and says:

 

“Hey. Remember me?”

 

//

 

It’s not easy at first. Tetsurou has a penchant for fast lanes and car crashes and Tsukishima is terrified of taking his eyes off the road. In the years since high school, they have both been in enough accidents to know this: most things don’t last.

 

The weeks trickle into months, one school semester unfolding into the next with all the simultaneous urgency and languor that college affords all of its inmates. The campus vanishes beneath a blanket of pure white snow, hiding pink noses and numb fingers— and then color begins to return to the landscape in increments. Tetsurou blinks just once, and it is summer all over again. Tsukishima is no longer a freshman. They are no longer strangers.

 

Some things have changed, others haven’t. Tetsurou is still loud and chaotic and enjoys being in close proximity to both friends and boys he has been in love with for three years alike. Tsukishima’s default reaction to everything is still to be fearlessly, shamelessly unimpressed. Their friendship is easy: full of effortless, back-and-forth conversation as if they were actors on a set who’d memorized the perfect movie script. Only this movie script kind of sucks, actually. Tetsurou cares with too much of his heart, loses bone-fragments of himself after every door shut in his face, and Tsukishima— Tsukishima won’t _say_ anything. But Tetsurou’s caught the tail-ends of enough hallway chatter to know this: once upon a time, he had been a boy, too. They have both been in accidents before; they know these things.

 

The day they run out onto the open field behind hall six in the middle of the night, a little tipsy and a little too high on top of the whole wide world, Tetsurou kisses him. Or, maybe Tsukishima kisses him? He’s not really sure. They sort of just fell forward into each other somewhere along the way, although Tetsurou’s probably drunker. This would explain why Tsukishima is pinned like a model in a butterfly exhibit underneath him, Tetsurou’s palms pressed flat against the dew-damp grass on either side of his head. This would explain the pink flush high on his cheeks.

 

It is a question that has been building between them for months. Say, _Tsukki, you wanna come over and watch movies until we pass out with empty ice cream tubs in our laps, you wanna get coffee after your Tuesday lecture, I know that professor is infamously boring, can I put my hands here. Hey, hey, Tsukki, is it okay with you if I put my hands here. It’s me, the dumbass who’s still in love with you. It’s me._

 

It goes like this: one moment they’re stumbling out of some party (Bokuto’s? Probably Bokuto’s. Bokuto throws _parties_ ) or another and sort of knocking shoulders every other second, and the next thing he knows the sky’s snuck out of his field of vision and they’ve both fallen down. Tetsurou rolls over and finds himself hovering above Tsukishima, who looks up at him with a faint crease between his brows.

 

“You,” Tsukishima says with a hilarious sort of detachment, “are not close enough.” He prods at Tetsurou’s chest with one finger.

 

Tetsurou cocks his head to the side, feeling the contents of his skull slosh around noisily with the motion.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well then.” Tetsurou lowers himself, as carefully as he can, onto his elbows. They’re closer now, noses just touching. He can see the delicate fan of Tsukishima’s eyelashes under the moon-lights above them. “Better?”

 

“Better.”

 

Maybe it’s the gold of Tsukishima’s eyes, maybe it’s the way the residual energy of probably-Bokuto’s party has burned itself into his bones, maybe breaking the rules has finally lost its charm. Maybe Tetsurou’s tired of walking past all the broken glass on the bathroom floor. He’s made up his mind: he wants this. He’s made up his mind.

 

So, he asks:

 

“Can I kiss you?”

 

For a fragile, fleeting moment, the universe stops. Tsukishima shrugs.

 

Tetsurou chuckles, but it’s small. He’s small. In this moment the universe, which has stopped, is so, so small around them, reduced to nothing more than the dew-wet grass, the distant thump of music; Tsukishima’s heartbeat, Tetsurou’s heartbeat. “That’s not a yes. Can I?”

 

A flurry of emotion blizzards across Tsukishima’s face, and vanishes just as fast. He quirks one corner of his mouth upwards, flicks his gaze to Tetsurou’s almost nonchalantly.

 

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

 

//

 

“I’m— scared— that nothing lasts forever.” Tsukishima’s eyes are far away, fixed on a point in the sky as he says this. “Places disappear, memories fade, people change. Do you know what I mean, Kuroo? People change.”

 

Tsukishima’s voice is pitched low, steady in spite of the vulnerable edge to the rest of him. He’s sitting up on the field, legs stretched out in front, most of his weight pushed back to his hands. Beside him, Tetsurou has rolled flat onto his back on the grass. At Tsukishima’s words, he does not fly into action. The alcohol has settled into a warm buzz in his veins. The night is eternally young.

 

Tetsurou simply asks, “what do you want this to be?”

 

The reply is instantaneous, and followed by a heavy sigh. Too heavy for someone so young and kind, Tetsurou thinks quietly. Tsukishima is all of nineteen years old and beautiful enough to bring the heavens to their knees, and still he is terrified of taking his eyes off the road. He is terrified. Tetsurou gets it. The world’s full of shit sometimes.

 

Tsukishima’s reply is: “I don’t know.”

 

Smiling wryly to himself, Tetsurou rolls over to Tsukishima’s side, propping his head up on his elbow so he can see the silk-soft expression on the other’s face.

 

“Do you want it to be something?”

 

“Are you capable of nothing but asking questions?”

 

“Are you incapable of answering them?”

 

“Fine, smartass. Maybe I _do_ want this to be something. It doesn’t matter, it’s not— not going to go anywhere anyway.”

 

Tetsurou waves his free hand around in the air, catching Tsukishima’s attention like he’d intended it to.

 

“Hey, you know the painter Hokusai? The guy who did that famous painting of the waves? He had a pretty shitty life— his two wives and his kids died before him, he got struck by lightning at fifty, he got a _stroke_ in his sixties and had to completely relearn the whole art thing. It’s like fate decided it wanted to take a shit on someone extra hard one day, and that someone happened to be him.

 

“But you know what? He didn’t die. Some-fucking-how, he didn’t die. The guy kept going. He thought he’d live to a hundred-and-ten, and that by then he would be invincible. ‘I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age.’ He said that and then he died. At ninety.”

 

“This is an awful story to tell on a Friday night, Kuroo, I thought three years as a lit major would have imparted at least _some_ measure of intelligence to your measly brain,” Tsukishima interrupts him, sounding bored. Tetsurou laughs brightly.

 

“Oh, you wound me. I just— let me finish, okay? You can pick at my nonexistent flaws, like, later.”

 

Tsukishima raises an eyebrow at him.

 

 _“Anyway, as I was saying,_ Hokusai had all these great plans, it’s just that he made them too late. But we’re different. We’re still young and inexperienced and stupid as hell, but whatever we figure out or don’t figure out now, we’ll have time to deal with it later. We have _time,_ Tsukki. I’m not asking you to go hurtling off a cliff with me, I’m asking you to give me a chance.”

 

Minutely, ever so minutely, because Tsukishima is a boy who exists beneath layers and layers of scarves and knitted armor, something in his expression gives. Tetsurou has waded through enough heartbreak to know how to keep himself out of the impact-zone. He sees it. The tilt of his eyebrows, the mellowing slope of his shoulders, the way he bites his lower lip and worries it between his teeth. The pinpricks of light at the corners of his eyes, like stars. So Tetsurou pushes himself up to a sitting position, turns towards Tsukishima in the bluish-black darkness.

 

“So, what’s it gonna be?” He smiles, crooked, easy. Patient.

 

Tsukishima’s voice is rough. “You and your rhetorical questions, Kuroo fucking Tetsurou.” He runs a hand through the mess of his blond hair— it’s as close to a visible sign of agitation as anyone will ever get out of him— his gaze pointedly directed at his feet. A hiccup of time elapses. Tetsurou’s heart falls through the bone-cage of his chest. Above them, the night sky blinks down at them innocently, bruised and bleak and yet healing, the dim glow of it all slowly coming back into itself.

 

Tsukishima lifts his head.

 

“I guess— I’ll be in your care.”

 

//

 

They don’t cry. That’s not their style. This is all they are: a boy in the driver’s seat of a beat-up car that’s high on carbon dioxide, and another who’s held his breath all his life. This is all they’ve ever been.

 

But maybe, just maybe, they can have this.

 

//

 

Tetsurou picks up the broken glass on the floor with gloves this time. He’s got fucking _gloves,_ everyone, he’s actually intent on cleaning this place up, he’s going to mop the floor until it shines. He’s going to love with all of his heart this time until everything’s gleaming like it’s made of pure silver. And then maybe he’ll buy something made of actual silver, when he’s got a job and they’ve got an apartment together and the passage of time has slowed to just a trickle. Maybe he’ll say he’s in love. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He’ll figure it out later. There is time. There is time.

  


ix.

One day in summer, Tsukishima presses his hands against Tetsurou’s damp cheeks and bumps their foreheads together and says _you can call me Kei, you know, I really don’t mind._

 

Tetsurou swears, he _swears,_ that that day, all the stars are born again.

 

x.

It takes approximately ten seconds for Kei to grapple around for, and find, his glasses on the bedside stand in the morning. Usually Tetsurou is awake by this time, head buried in the crook of Kei’s neck. He’ll lay perfectly still, and wait for Kei to hook the glasses off the table and put them on. Mornings when the both of them are allowed to sleep in are slow, languid affairs, best savored with the curtains closed and the cool air dancing across their faces. Mornings like this are rare. They take these liberties when they can.

 

Other times, Tetsurou is elsewhere, there is already hot water on the kettle, and the living room is beginning to smell like breakfast. Other times, Tetsurou will pick up his glasses for him. If Kei is awake enough he will grumble childishly. If he is not, he will simply watch, eyes lidded, as Tetsurou leans over him, elbows digging into the milky white of the bedsheets. On mornings like this, Tetsurou slides Kei’s glasses up the bridge of his nose with a reverent touch. And always, always, Kei lets him.

 

Their queen-sized bed is a marked improvement from the tiny mattresses of their college dorm days. Tetsurou no longer has to worry about falling off the side at night, and Kei doesn’t have to fight him for his share of the blanket anymore. There’s enough space for the three hundred pillows that Tetsurou lugged out of his childhood memories, the beat-up stuffed dinosaur Kei has a silent attachment to. The ledge above the headboard is starting to fill up.

 

Today, Tetsurou looks at the windowsill, awash with light, and thinks about making a trip to the florist’s.

 

“Tetsurou,” Kei complains, fitting his hand around the other’s. His lips are twisted in a faint pout. “What the fuck is it with you and my glasses.”

 

He kisses the tip of Kei’s nose, and laughs. “They’re cute. You’re cute.”

 

“Great, my boyfriend has a glasses fetish.”

 

“Mm, maybe he does.”

 

“I can’t believe you just admitted to that. I’m horrified.”

 

Tetsurou kisses his cheek for good measure, right below the frame of his lens. “Mm,” he says again.

 

Kei sighs. “You’re hopeless.”

 

(Secretly, Tetsurou is honored that Kei has let him this far in, even with the broken glass, even with the debris on the highway. Even then.)

 

“But.” Kei loops his other hand around Tetsurou’s neck, tugging him in closer.

 

“But,” Tetsurou parrots.

 

“But—” Kei kisses him. It’s light and chaste and his lips are dry. Tetsurou thinks he’s still half-asleep after all. He thinks: _I would live through a thousand more car crashes for this._

 

“That was very convincing. Whatever you were trying to convince me of. Very convincing.”

 

They take these liberties when they can. Most days Kei has morning classes, because he’s like that. Most mornings, Tetsurou has shit to do, because he isn’t the life of the party like Bokuto, but he _is_ the life of, like, mini-gatherings in seductively well-hidden restaurants and serenading people on the spot. So picture this: the morning light slanting across Kei’s high cheekbones, his mussed-up blond hair. The way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs. The way the room fills up with color. Think about the warmth blossoming in Tetsurou’s chest as Kei pulls him back into bed, burrowing into his chest like a baby bird. Think about that feeling.

 

It is always morning in Tetsurou’s heart these days. Even when it’s raining, even when storm clouds are shuffling across the horizon outside.

 

“We’re performing for a special celebration at the bar in Roppongi tonight, you wanna come watch?”

 

Kei mumbles something unintelligible, blowing hot breath across the skin beneath Tetsurou’s shirt. He fiddles with the waistband of his pants. And then: “Don’t think I can deal with the crowds today.”

 

“That’s cool.” Tetsurou kisses the top of his head. “Breakfast?”

 

“Later.”

 

“Later it is.”

 

Without realizing it, Tetsurou ends up drifting off again, his arms loosely wrapped around Kei. By the time both of them are truly and properly awake, the toast has long since gone cold. Tetsurou stands in the middle of the kitchen and runs his hands through his stupid messy hair, monologuing about the unfairness of the universe. Kei just rolls his eyes.

 

“We have a microwave, Tetsurou.”

 

“It’s not the _same._ ”

 

“Shut up and get the plug. I’ll fry eggs.”

 

Tetsurou does get the plug, because he’s a good boyfriend even if he does have a slight glasses fetish. When he’s done with that and the toast is off getting massacred a second time, he walks past Kei and opens the cupboards above the counter. The mugs are exactly where he’d expected them to be. Two imperfect porcelain things, shaped by hand and covered in paw-prints. The sweet old lady with the polka dotted apron had personally picked them out of her haphazard assortment of cups. _These look like they would be at home with the two of you,_ she’d said. Suddenly, Tetsurou had felt very overwhelmed, and had to hide his face behind Kei shoulder while the other paid for the mugs. Afterwards, they both got a foil-wrapped milk caramel.

 

Oh, the woes of growing old. He wasn’t half as sentimental back in his high school days, his feelings towards Kei nothing more than an amalgamation of _sharp eyes_ and _pretty lips_ and _I wonder if his hair would be soft if I touched it._ Time does things to you. It hardens the heart into something fire-forged and scarred, and yet gives it room for it to heal. It makes you old and sappy and leaves you enamored with things like grocery shopping and the water rings on the living room table. It eases the soul.

 

Time does things to you. It is summer now, and Tetsurou doesn’t have to dig around for five minutes in the kitchen to find the cups. Somewhere along the way, they grew into this small apartment with its pale peach walls and creaky floorboards. Somewhere along the way, this house turned into a home.

 

Tetsurou looks at Kei, and marvels.

 

xi.

It takes four hours to get from the heart of Tokyo to Kanazawa by bullet train. While booking his tickets online, it hadn’t seemed like that long. Now, sitting in the cushioned seat with his chin in his palm and his phone balanced on the edge of the foldable table, Tetsurou feels the distance acutely.

  
There is a string between them. One end is tied to Tetsurou’s pinky, and the other to Kei’s. In high school it was half-apparition, half-dream; he rarely felt its presence, content to muse over small happenings and missed opportunities. In college, it began to take shape, solidifying into the kind of desire that led them to each other’s dorm rooms in the early hours of the morning, bright-eyed and wary. Lately, it’s become something familiar. It is the photos of stray cats and street side finds that Tetsurou sends throughout the day, the lights Kei leaves on at the end of the hallway each night. It is the washed dishes Tetsurou props up at an angle because he knows they won’t dry properly otherwise, and Kei doesn’t like dealing with wet dishes.

 

There is a string between them. As the bullet train speeds away from Tokyo, Tetsurou feels a fierce tug at his finger. Or maybe it’s a tug at his heart. Or maybe it’s both.

 

//

 

When his favorite cousin, Yuka, calls to say that she’s getting married, _you better come Kuroo I’m saving you a special fucking seat at the reception,_ he has to go. Kei looks over his schedule for the next week, peppered with tallies for work, practice, and work (scribbled image of the moon), but doesn’t say anything.

 

Tetsurou is, primarily, a Tokyo boy. Born and bred in the city, he has always been about scratched-up knees and plum-bruised skin, neon lights and nighttime whims, the city pulsing beneath his feet like a living thing. Beneath the palms of his hands, the complicated world of back alleys and crooked sidewalks unfolds like a map with nothing unmarked. He can walk from Haneda airport to Adachi with his eyes closed.

 

But the truth is he has relatives all over Japan, so he is only _primarily_ a city boy. Between the hectic mess of getting out of college, moving in, and finding a rhythm to life that didn’t involve anyone in the picture falling asleep in the middle of the street, he’d fallen out of touch with them. Kanazawa and its winding streets, forests, and lakes, faded into obscurity.

 

This afternoon, holding a flute of champagne in one hand and feeling the weight of his phone in his pocket with the other, it comes back to him. Tetsurou’s in what his mother would call a _nice suit,_ nice clothes, black suit jacket and red tie secured under the collar of his white dress shirt. _Unimpressive,_ Kei had decreed when Tetsurou took a photo for him. _Hot,_ Tetsurou had corrected, smiling at his phone screen. Kei sent him off with a passive _go enjoy your champagne or whatever,_ and so Tetsurou had flounced out of his relatives’ house with his hair looking three times as awful as usual, straight into the celebratory mood of the day.

 

Yuka cries at the wedding.

 

It’s a beautiful affair. One that, if you asked Tetsurou, escapes describing. Not that anyone actually asks, but he does think it, quietly awed by the sanctity of the whole affair. After the ceremony and the formalities and everyone has finished crying except for Yuka’s husband, Kimihiro, who is a whole soft spot in himself and has to dab at the corners of his eyes every few minutes, Tetsurou finds himself alone. The earlier-mentioned champagne and phone are both right where they should be. People mill around him, their soda bubble laughter echoing up into the blue of the sky. The garden is love-letter pink.

 

Sometime in the late afternoon, Yuka drifts through the crowd to him with her husband hanging from one arm. She’s glowing. They exchange pleasantries and congratulations, the honest joy in Tetsurou’s chest pushing past his Cheshire Cat exterior and softening the corners of his smile. Their sun-warm faces are tilted towards the light.

 

Yuka puts a hand on his shoulder, firm and steady. Since they were kids, she’s always been the one to win arm wrestling challenges, sidewalk balancing competitions, races around the neighborhood.

 

“You’ve changed, Kuroo.”

 

“Thanks. I’ve been working out.” He’s lying. He hasn’t. Tetsurou has been walking home because of missed last-departure trains and late-night ice cream runs. That’s about it.

 

“You goddamn loser,” Yuka says, laughing. She shakes her head. “But really, I mean it. You look happier.”

 

For a split-second, the outdoor area grows incrementally brighter around him. Tetsurou blinks into the sudden heady rush of emotion, turns to find his cousin prodding at his cheek with her finger.

 

Ah. He’s crying. Just a bit.

 

“Aren’t you a bit late to the party?” Yuka’s laughing again. It’s a gentle sound, like waves whispering along the coastline. It’s a happy sound.

 

Tetsurou laughs, too, through the blurry film reel of his vision. He feels ten again, small and clueless and gaping up at the looming skyscrapers of Tokyo’s gem-encrusted skyline. He feels like a city boy. He feels hopelessly, hopelessly in love.

 

“It took me a while,” he says. "It took me a damn while."

 

//

 

It takes four hours to get from the heart of Tokyo to Kanazawa by bullet train. That is why, when he says he’s visiting (for the first time in like half a decade) everyone says _stay for a while._ Stay for a while, Kuroo, it’s been forever. We’re all _dying_ to see you. There’s a string attached to his pinky, and there’s a beautiful boy on the other end, but he agrees. For a while. And to be fair, four days is a pretty short while.

 

In between getting mauled by a posse of kids on a perpetual sugar-high and blinding the adults with his toothpaste advertisement smile, he sends Kei messages. _Look, it’s you [photo attachment: grumpy neighborhood shiba inu]. Hey hey Kei it’s you [photo attachment: grumpy toddler in advertisement for strawberry daifuku]. Keiiiiii [photo attachment: grumpy...thing]._ Kei replies to about a third of them, and deigns to respond to the rest. He opens every message.

 

Two days before he's due back in Tokyo, he’s rifling through his suitcase when a slip of paper falls out. Tetsurou plucks it off the floor and turns it over; it's a postcard. Hokusai’s painting, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, stares back at him innocently, and he recalls the late-night ice cream run, the weight of Kei’s body against his, the watery shape of the egg white moon outside the window. Kanazawa has been kind to him, and Kanazawa will always feel like walking back into his favorite childhood playground, but it is not home.

 

Pulling out the wooden chair at the desk, Tetsurou sits down with the postcard and a pen, and begins to write.

 

//

 

Tetsurou’s newest discovery, is that it takes less than two days for domestic mail to travel the distance afforded by three hours of bullet train naps. It's a pleasant surprise. He hadn't really been sure, traipsing along to the post office the next morning, if it’d reach Kei before he did. He hadn’t really wanted to think about it.

 

Then Kei calls on his last night. Kei almost never calls. Not even when Tetsurou’s forgotten to inform him about his plans for the night and vanished off the face of the earth until two a.m.. Not even when he’s cut his finger dicing vegetables and fittingly escorted himself to the E&R. That day Tetsurou had been _terrified,_ but he’d hidden it well, and Kei had seen through him just as well, so there they found themselves again. Walking in straight lines in broad daylight. Transparent to no one but each other.

 

Anyway, point is, Kei almost _never_ calls. Tetsurou bites back an over enthusiastic greeting when he picks up, and holds his breath.

 

 _“Postcards_ in this day and age.”

 

Tetsurou’s new newest discovery goes like this: he's a fucking sap. Or rather, he's always been aware of it on some level. But at nine at night in a house lit up like a circus, Kei’s voice filters in through the phone from miles and miles away, and Tetsurou realizes, much like one might be hit with a meteor from outer space, just how much he's missed him.

 

“Good evening to you too, darling.” He tries to sound smug, and if he comes off a little bit needy, too, then no one needs to talk about it.

 

“I—” Kei stops himself. There's a moment of silence. Tetsurou closes his eyes; in his mind’s eye Kei is somewhere in their apartment, leaning against a wall, or curled up like a cat on the sofa. He's picked up a lot of things from Tetsurou over the years, like the habitual leaning (which Tetsurou absolutely does not do because he thinks it makes him look cool, and Kei absolutely does not do because he alternates between being low-energy-lazy and straight up tired), and the pet names (although, again, Kei claims to only them ironically).

 

“Thank you,” Kei says, very soft. So soft it barely trickles out of his receiver, so soft Tetsurou almost misses it. But he doesn’t. There’s a note of something warm underneath.

 

“No,” Tetsurou falls back onto the bed, stares up at the ceiling. “Thank _you._ For calling.”

 

“The apartment is drafty without your obnoxious presence around.”

 

He snorts. “What, missing me already?”

 

“No.”

 

“I miss you too.”

 

“I said no—”

 

Tetsurou interrupts Kei’s blatant self-denial with festive cheer. “Remember Hokusai?”

 

More silence. Then the sound of shuffling, light footsteps on carpeted flooring, a muted thump; Kei’s on the couch. “No. Yes. What.”

 

“Great! ‘Cos I remembered Hokusai. Thus, the postcard.” He traces the cracks in the wall with his eyes. They look a little like spiderwebs from down here, little fault-lines crisscrossing each other at a thousand intervals.

 

“You mean your super cheesy speech under the stars.”

 

“That’s the one. And hey— it may have been cheesy, but Kei. Look where we are now.” He hadn’t meant to sound serious, but by the end Tetsurou’s voice has dropped to something of a star-struck whisper. He feels sixteen again, blinking in Morse code back at the man in the moon.

 

 _Look where we are now._ Look at us, he means. Really, really look at us.

 

“You’ve always reminded me of a cat,” Kei says out of the blue.

 

Tetsurou nods, and then remembers Kei can’t see him. “Mmm,” he agrees.

 

“I was thinking— if, maybe you’d— we’d, uh, want a companion. Or something.”

 

Something starts in the pit of his stomach. It’s a little like setting a forest on fire, like squatting in the dark in the backyard with sparklers in your hands. It’s a little like the beginning of a firework show. Gradually, it spreads to his arms, his legs, his fingertips. It lights him up.

 

“Let me get this straight. Tsukishima Kei, are you asking me if I want to adopt a cat?”

 

The reply is almost begrudging. “...Yes.”

 

“Fuck, _yes._ I mean, yes, yes, absolutely yes. Yes to everything.”

 

The fact that Kei’s thought ahead like that makes him want to climb up onto the roof of this house and yell at the sky. It’s the entire fucking world. The entire fucking world exists in those few, hesitant words. Tetsurou thinks he might cry. Again. Dizzy with the sudden onslaught of emotion, he rolls over onto his side, blinking furiously.

 

“We can have a cat, Kei. And not just a cat, like, you know those metal hooks in the living room? I was thinking we could hang little planters from them— and there’s still space on the ledge above the headboard so we could get stuff to put there— and oh, the balcony too, what do you think of succulents—”

 

“I like succulents,” Kei says, and then says it again when Tetsurou doesn’t respond.

 

He finds his voice again, somewhere in the mess of the stars and the night and the haphazard mess of his split-open suitcase on the floor before him. He finds himself.

 

“Yeah,” Tetsurou whispers, completely gone. “Succulents are good.”

 

//

 

Three hours away. Tetsurou’s heart is three hours away.

  


xii.

In the spring of their third year, they move into an apartment together.

 

They’d make for a strange combination, if you looked from afar. Here, the car crash-vivid violence, the textbook recklessness, the piercings and the red velvet smile. Here, the white knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The pale, pale skin.

 

But at twenty-four and twenty-two, they’ve both gotten tired of watching things happen from afar. Time has softened their edges, replaced the hard sugar-crust of spite with something gentler. They are kinder, now. They are less afraid.

 

Which is not to say that they aren’t scared at all; Tetsurou’s never been an idealist. The future looms over his head like the Grim Reaper, wielding a scythe crumbled together out of hard bricks of uncertainty. They’re never going to know where they’re going until they get there. They’re never going to get used to the rollercoaster-ride. The adrenalin rush, the wind in their ears, the scenery flashing by like lightning.

 

It’s all right. They’re going to have succulents and Jurassic Park posters and a lifetime’s supply of white chocolate pretzels. They’re going to have a cat.

 

It’s all right. They have time.

  


xiii.

_Me [11:24 A.M.]:_

_aaand touchdown_

 

_Kei [11:26 A.M.]:_

_i’m on my way_

 

It takes him exactly three minutes and twenty-eight seconds to find Kei in the crowded train station. He knows this: he has been keeping count with every heartbeat, every tap of his fingers against his leg. He knows this.

 

Tetsurou lugs his suitcase out of the train carriage, pauses for a moment on the steps down to survey the crowd. The train station glistens with sunlight, beams of gold bouncing off the glossy top of the bullet train, the glass of his phone screen, the heads of the people milling around him. The air smells and feels and sounds like Tokyo, in all its hazy, half-awake glamor.

 

It has been a long, long day, even though the morning is only just beginning to ripen. Tetsurou is tired, just short of exhausted. His arm is sore from being propped up against the window for most of the ride back. There’s a crick in his neck. But never mind that, never mind that.

 

He sees Kei first.

 

Today, Tsukishima Kei looks like a dream. From here, he is nothing more than soft blond curls and gold eyes, wandering through the crowd with careless precision. Around his neck hangs a pair of glossy white headphones; the collar of his shirt is popped. He stands at least half a head above the rest, but he’s facing slightly away from Tetsurou. Kei doesn’t see him coming.

 

Tetsurou stumbles through the crowd with his suitcase in tow, a single fish swimming upstream against the current. Finally, finally, he reaches him, stops a few feet away.

 

Dinosaur-print shirt and black jeans, jacket pulled loosely around his shoulders; Kei is shivering slightly, his hands shoved in his pockets. Tetsurou remembers this, too— Kei gets cold _very_ easily. It’s something about the way he hides himself away when they’re outside, like a delicate blown glass sculpture in a museum exhibit conceals the beating heart of its creator. It’s something about the gentleness of his hands. It means blanket forts in summer and long hours on the couch in the winter. It means ticklish kisses and champagne bubble laughter at night.

 

Breathe in your surroundings. Breathe in the peacock blue sky. Breathe.

 

Take a moment.

 

Now imagine this: the vast, open space of the third gymnasium in Tokyo, the squeak of sneakers against polished wood. _Did you know it takes less than a second for you to become infatuated with someone?_ There’s a boy here with a heart that’s just started to beat, and there’s a boy who doesn’t know what that means yet. There’s a feeling in the air, like the held-breath before the downpour, like the thunder before the storm. There’s a feeling in the air.

 

Imagine this: the dew-wet grass and the silvery moonlight on the open field, everyone in the world drunk on the citrus-sharp tang of youth. Every point he touches him at, burning like a forest fire. _Hey, hey, remember me? I’m scared that nothing lasts forever._ The boy with the beating heart has learned to soften the sound of his pulse. The boy who didn’t know anything at all now knows too much. Every place they meet at is a symphony of hurt and healing.

 

Imagine this: an apartment in one of the quieter parts of Tokyo, where the streets are lined with family-run restaurants and dollar stores manned by kind old ladies with milk caramels tucked inside their pockets. IKEA furniture and white chocolate pretzels in the fridge. Fingerprints of conversation left on the sheets in the bedroom, on the balcony railings, on the kitchen counter alongside the water rings and the coffee stains. Fingerprints on their hearts.

 

Two boys, two pairs of hands, two skeptics that believed nothing in the world would ever work out in their favor ever again. Sunlight shifting through the bottom of the swimming pool. Moon-magic. There are two ways to say I love you. Two ways to keep a story going.

 

_I’ll wash up when I’m done, you can go ahead._

 

Kei turns his head at Tetsurou’s approach, and for a precious, precious moment his expression is completely unguarded. His eyes go wide; his brows shoot up. A cotton candy cloud of affection sifts over his face, softening his gaze, the bow-curve of his lips. He stands under a honeyed slant of sunlight, perfectly still.

 

They don’t cry. That’s not their style. There’s so much more to life than getting sad for a moment about how happy you’re allowed to be. You’re allowed to be happier than you’ve ever dreamed. At twenty-four, with the whole road map of his life laid out before him, Tetsurou thinks he finally understands this.

 

They don’t cry. They’ve been in enough accidents to know that you’ve got to walk away from the crash site even if your feet are bleeding, even if there’s a hole in your heart. They’ve been together for long enough to relearn the safety procedures that come with being whole again.

 

They don’t cry. They don’t have a reason to, anymore.

 

In the whirlpool of the city’s heart, Kei is still standing there, head tilted to one side, glasses perched low on his nose. His jacket is half-falling off one shoulder, and Tetsurou’s hand itches with the urge to tug it back up so he goes to him and he does that. He tugs the jacket back into place.

 

Car crash, blood rash, airbags— God, he never thought he’d make it this far.

 

“Are you going to say something?” Kei smiles at him wryly.

 

“Oh— uh—”

 

Above their heads, a crow lets out a protesting caw. Tetsurou runs a hand through his hair, pushes his fringe out of the way. Takes a deep breath.

 

“I’m, um. I’m home. I guess?”

 

Kei smiles wryly. “Welcome home.”

 

Then he looks Tetsurou squarely in the eyes, cups his jaw with the palm of his hand, and pulls him in.

  


xiv.

It takes less than a second to fall in love, all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) or [tumblr](http://corpsentry.tumblr.com/)
> 
> i started this like 6 days before my finals started and then forgot about it and got back into it at some point and after like three weeks i am proud to say i am finally fucking done. i started writing this bc i wanted to write some corny domestic shit but then it spiraled out of control because it turns out i had a lot of corny domestic shit i wanted to write and so here are eleven thousand words of just that. Corny Domestic Shit. yeah man. i had fun. i hope you had fun  
> the quote at the beginning is, as mentioned in the story, from hokusai. hokusai was this cool ass old grumpy painter dude and like....my first idol. our art teacher introduced him to us in first grade and i was like holy shit i love this dude, his art, his name. there's a hokusai restaurant in tokyo disneyland. my club penguin username (before i forgot my password and email and lost my entire childhood) was hokusai2001. i had to use him. in retrospect the decision is weird as fuck but we all have our vices. my vice is this dude  
> new edit: title is a match to the title of that beautiful book by rebecca stead but it is 12:42 in the morning and i am fresh out of fuckin ideas. don't look at me. good bye
> 
> as usual (tooting my neighbor's car horn for dramatic effect) thank you for reading! all kudos, comments, and bookmarks are shots to the heart and especially comments make me die very hard. but as always you do you and i'll do me. issa big world. we chill  
> my finals are technically over but we have one more annoying ass a level exam so i'm like semi out of it and semi very into it. i also have a google doc with like eight different potential aus i wanna work on LOL but i dunno. i'll see you when i see you. take care
> 
> have a good one


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